Author Eric Chenoweth brings a new perspective to former UFT President Albert Shanker’s already distinguished and well-documented career as a national teacher union leader and education advocate in his new book “Democracy’s Champion: Albert Shanker and the International Impact of the American Federation of Teachers.”

Chenoweth begins his 100-page monograph with a brief look at Shanker’s early years as a founder of the UFT, but his focus is on the union leader’s sustained and pioneering efforts to strengthen workers’ rights and to support union activists and democratic values around the world before and after the Cold War. In an unusual move as president of the AFT, Shanker created a separate international affairs department within the national union in 1981.

The author quotes Shanker explaining his motivation for moving to a world stage: “The very idea of unionism is solidarity. It means, ‘I’m not strong enough to do things alone. I’ve got to band together with brothers and sisters.’ And you can’t just do that with teachers. You’re not strong enough. And so you are in the general labor movement with other workers. And pretty soon you realize the same thing is true on a worldwide basis.”

Chenoweth is the co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe and has worked in the international affairs department of the AFT and as a consultant for the Albert Shanker Institute and Freedom House.

The book is available via PDF download on the Shanker Institute’s website at http://bit.ly/1lGLxAR.

— Dorothy Callaci